Alternian Nights
by Elizabeth Culmer
Summary: A collection of short pre-Sgrub stories that share continuity but are not connected by any pretense at a narrative arc.
1. Romancing the Sky

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Andrew Hussie. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Author's Note:** This was written for Cotton Candy Bingo (a Dreamwidth fanwork bingo community dedicated to fluff) in response to the prompt: _space_.

**Summary:** Sollux Captor meets Aradia Megido when she's looking up at the stars instead of down at the ground. She takes him flying.

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**Romancing the Sky****  
**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Ironically, for all her love of buried shit under the ground, Sollux meets Aradia because she's stopped to look _up_ instead. She's standing in the middle of a street outside the grocery depot where he's come to pick up a (belated) monthly supply of food and drink and all the other useless crap it takes to keep his body and hive (and his lusus, he guesses) more or less together. Her head is tipped back, her mouth slightly open and her hands cupped around her eyes to block the ambient light of the city. Sollux is looking down at his feet because he's not quite sure they're going to keep going where he tries to direct them - it's two nights since he's eaten, he's been busy, okay? - and crashes right into her.

Neither hits the ground.

They stare at each other through the hazy shrouds of varicolored psionic lights.

"What the actual fuck," Sollux says. "Didn't you thee me coming? There'th thith amazing invention called 'feet,' you might try uthing them to move out of people'th way."

He immediately wants to kill himself. Wow, way to fucking go, that's an excellent way to alienate a person who doesn't already know you and therefore doesn't automatically hate you on sight, great job, keep up the good work. Also his lisp is still doing that shitty thing where it gets stronger the more upset he is and makes him sound like a retarded douchebag.

Weirdly, the girl just smiles. Her teeth are stupidly blunt, but he has to admit her horns are impressive - huge flat curls against her wild fountain of hair. He supposes she's pretty, if you care about that sort of thing.

"I was seeing if I could find north just from the constellations," she says, "but I guess it's silly to try stargazing in the city."

"Thilly ith being way too nithe," Sollux snaps, appalled all over again at this blatant lack of basic common sense. "You're _pthychic_. Jutht feel the fucking magnetic field like a thane perthon."

He loses his grip on his telekinesis for a fraction of a second, too tired to split his attention as smoothly as normal. The girl catches his wobble and has the nerve to look concerned instead of cruelly amused at his obvious weakness.

"You look like you're starving," she says. "When's the last time you ate?"

"Why the fuck do you care?"

"Wow, you really are a wreck," the girl says, sounding almost amazed at this shocking revelation of the incredibly fucking obvious. She settles back down to the surface of the street, her faint rust-colored halo fading as she tucks her own abilities away. "Why not care? I'm the one who almost made you fall and besides, I've never met another telekinetic as strong as I am. We might have a lot in common!"

"No. Jutht, no. I don't even need to know you to know we have nothing in common," Sollux says, but since she doesn't seem like she's planning to retaliate for their collision, he gratefully drops back to the ground and shoves his psionics down. It's a lot easier to keep them quiet altogether than to make them do what he wants and _only_ what he consciously wants when he's this tired and scattered.

The girl laughs at him... but even through his exhaustion he can tell it doesn't have the nasty, mocking tone laughter usually does when it's aimed at him. This is more like she's laughing at herself. Or maybe laughing at both of them at the same time?

She still thinks they're similar.

If she's that crazy, she might even be right! They can be completely skullfucked together! Reality-impaired psionics of Alternia, unite! They can keep each other from committing inadvertent suicide - him in all the obvious ways, and her by pulling this instant friendship idiocy on normal trolls whose reflexes are geared toward taking revenge in person instead of through the internet. It will be the most stupidly codependent moirallegiance ever.

Sollux wants to blow his own brains out for even imagining a future that sappy.

"How ith it even pothible to be tho cheerful?" Sollux grumbles as the girl grabs his hand and twines her fingers between his own. He hasn't touched anyone but his lusus in... god, perigees. And the time before that it was just a computer store clerk trying to choke him for giving a perfectly accurate assessment of all the ways the store's products sucked.

He pries himself out of the girl's grip with a quick burst of psionics and braces for her anger.

The girl just shrugs. "I want to make the most of my life, so I decided to look on the bright side of things. I think it's worth the effort," she says. "Hey, let's go get you something to eat. And after that, do you want to go flying with me? I bet if we go high enough we can see the stars even right over the city."

"Yeah, okay, whatever," Sollux says. He's never cared about space. It's hard to get worked up about stargazing when you know the Empire is just waiting to shove you into a biomechanical harness and turn you into a mindless starship engine component once you've reached your adult size. But maybe he should take a look at what's out there, familiarize himself with the face of the enemy.

It turns out that if you hold a bubble of air around yourself and accelerate at just the right speed, you can make it to geosynchronous orbit before you run out of oxygen. The view is actually pretty fucking awesome.

The girl laughs all the way back down.

When they land in a grassy field in the middle of fucking nowhere, she flops on her back and grins up at the midnight sky. It's much darker away from the electric glare of the city. The moons are low on the horizon and a thousand stars peer from behind and between the scattered clouds.

"I'm Aradia, by the way," the girl says. "Aradia Megido. My Trollian handle's apocalypseArisen."

"Thollukth Captor, twinArmageddonth," Sollux says. "I gueth you can contact me thometime, but if you get too thtupid I thwear I'll block you."

The girl smiles at him with her adorably blunt teeth. "Okay."

Sollux lies down beside her. He still needs to pick up groceries. He ought to be hurrying home to make sure his lusus hasn't trashed the roof of his hivestem again. He is missing so much quality programming time.

He doesn't care.

He reaches sideways and touches Aradia's hand. She laces their fingers together and he clings to her, basking in the warmth of skin on skin.

After an hour they break atmosphere again. This time they share a bubble.

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**AN:** Thanks for reading, and please review! I appreciate all comments, but I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and _why_.


	2. Scourge of the Sea

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Andrew Hussie. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Author's Note:** This was written for Cotton Candy Bingo (a Dreamwidth fanwork bingo community dedicated to fluff) in response to the prompt: _lending a coat in the cold_.

Because Vriska had to learn sailing at some point - she was clearly comfortable on ships when she and Eridan were Flarp partners, and if nothing else she would have jumped at yet another way to imitate Mindfang - but I sincerely doubt she would have wanted to learn from _Eridan_. A teaching relationship would give him far too much implicit power over her. Terezi, on the other hand... while that relationship was clearly competitive, it was also more collaborative. I think Vriska might have been (reluctantly) willing to be vulnerable in her Scourge Sister's company. And before the Team Charge debacle, I don't think Terezi would have taken advantage.

**Summary:** Vriska tries to teach herself to sail. Terezi waits on shore for the inevitable disaster.

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**Scourge of the Sea  
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"You're going to capsize. And then I will laugh at you," Terezi pronounces.

Vriska hisses at her, still struggling to shove her newly acquired sailboat through the stiff, waterlogged sand into the frigid ocean. "Like hell I will! My ancestor was the best pirate in the history of Alternia. Sailing is in my blood!"

"Sailing isn't a genetic reflex," Terezi says, still sitting cross-legged on a jagged gray boulder, practically drowning in an oversized teal jacket. Spray kisses her bright red sneakers every time a wave rolls in but she doesn't seem to care.

"It is so and I'll prove it!" Vriska insists, shoving harder. Boats float - shouldn't that mean they're light? But this stupid wreck is so heavy, absolutely the heaviest thing she's ever tried to move, and that includes all the rocks and branches and corpses she's hauled out of or into her lusus's web over the sweeps.

_Finally_ the damn thing gets just far out enough that when the next wave surges around Vriska's legs, soaking her jeans up to the knees, it lifts free of the sand for two vital seconds. She gives one last push - the sticky-down metal plate near the back end scrapes an ever-shallower line as the boat's body rises - the mast sways straight up instead of canting sideways at a sixty degree angle - and Vriska shakes her fists at the sky.

"Yeeeeeeeessssssss!"

Then she scrambles to catch her sailboat before the retreating wave can steal it away.

On her rock, Terezi is cackling like a madwoman. "You should have saved the scumhead you got this from, at least until he showed you how to use it!" she shouts. "You can't learn to sail from your ancestor's journal - she only talked about romance and religion, not about how her boat worked!"

"How did you know that? Did you read the whole thing when I wasn't looking?" Vriska demands, suddenly tense for no reason she understands. So her ancestor killed Terezi's ancestor. That doesn't actually matter, right? Even if they've taken their ancestors' names and outfits for their Flarp personas, they're not doomed to repeat _all_ of the past. Just like Tavros isn't ever going to kill her, even if she finally manages to make him stop acting like a pathetic loser.

"I didn't need to. You just told me," Terezi says. She favors Vriska with the brilliant sharktooth smile that's the last thing so many of their opponents see before Vriska knocks them unconscious and takes them home for spidermom's dinner.

Vriska can't decide whether to be impressed or annoyed that Terezi can manipulate her so well. She settles for tossing her hair. "It doesn't matter! How hard can it be? The wind's coming from that way, so I pull the ropes to swing the sail perpendicular and catch it. Simple!"

Terezi shakes her head in mock sorrow. "You can lead a grub to sopor but you can't make it sleep."

"Oh yeah? Watch me!" Vriska says, and places her hands on the boat. It's mostly flat and seamless, with a small cavity behind the sail just large enough for three people to sit, or two people and some basic weapons. If she learns to sail - if Terezi will get off her stupid butt and _help_ - then they can move into oceanic Flarp campaigns as well as landlocked ones. Maybe her lusus can't tell the difference between seadwellers and normal trolls, but the gillfaces have the best loot.

The boat lurches under Vriska's weight - front-to-back and a weird, dipping sideways roll at the same time - and she tumbles awkwardly into the cavity, nearly banging her horns on the flat metal bar that holds the bottom edge of the triangular sail. She lies facedown for a minute, catching her breath and waiting for her knees and elbows to stop hurting.

Terezi is laughing at her again.

Vriska sits up, a new burst of determination pushing her sore joints and freezing feet into the background. Okay. She can do this. How tricky can two ropes and a piece of cloth even be? This rope pulls the sail that way, so the other rope pulls it the opposite direction. See, Terezi? It's totally logical. Any idiot could figure it out, to say nothing of a genius with the luck of a born pirate!

A gust of wind lifts her hair from her back and the metal bar slams across the boat, pulling the rope through Vriska's hand so fast it rips her fingers raw.

She doesn't duck in time.

The next thing she's aware of is pain - burning hands, aching shoulders, screaming lungs - and somebody's arms around her waist, holding her upright and pulling her steadily through the hungry, frigid waves.

"Are you awake now?" Terezi asks, her voice weirdly calm and even.

Vriska turns her hands palm-up and blinks at the blood leaking into the water in messy blue swirls. The salt stings in her torn flesh. "Fuck," she tries to say. It comes out more like 'fthuh'.

"This is when I would say 'I told you so,'" Terezi informs her as Vriska remembers that she has feet and tries to plant them onto solid sand. She can't reach any. She hadn't realized the sailboat had drifted so far out.

Vriska swallows and says, "Yeah, yeah, I know." The words are more intelligible this time.

"Then I won't say it," Terezi says. Which is stupid like her legal technicalities always are - just because she's not officially saying it doesn't mean she didn't already rub it in - but Vriska is more interested in the sand she just touched with the tip of her sneaker. She wants to flop down on the beach and sleep for a perigee. Holy _shit_, her back hurts. And her throat, like she tried to breathe water and some of it's still stuck in her chest.

When Terezi finally drags her out of the surf and lets go of her waist, Vriska drops to her knees in the dark sand, bends over, and coughs until her lunch rushes up in a too-watery flood.

"Fuck," she says again, low and hoarse. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_."

Terezi doesn't say anything. Vriska turns her head, then regrets the motion and shuffles on her knees until she's facing out to sea. Terezi is swimming toward Vriska's escaping sailboat, a swift, economical overhand stroke that slices neatly through each rise and fall of the waves. After a minute she catches the rope attached to the pointy front end and begins the journey back to shore. That takes longer.

Vriska gargles seawater and spits, trying to get the taste of vomit out of her mouth. Then she shuffles a bit away from that spot and sticks her hands into the crest of a wave. It burns, both the salt and the tug on half-torn flaps of skin, but it gets the sand out of the wounds. Then she does flop down - very carefully - and waits for Terezi to come drip on her.

Terezi obliges. Vriska blinks furiously when a bit of seaweed falls across her nose, one slimy leaf nearly touching her eye. Which suddenly makes her notice her glasses are gone. Shit. She liked those frames!

"Quit being so melodramatic," Terezi says, crouching down to pick the seaweed off Vriska's face. "We are completely soaked, the wind is rising, and it's the middle of the dark season. If we don't get shelter we'll both die of hypothermia - which is a stupid, pointless way to die, so I suggest we avoid it."

"Screw you, I'm not getting up," Vriska says, flapping her bloody hands in Terezi's general direction. The gesture pulls painfully at her shoulders.

Terezi sighs. The she stands and trudges barefoot out of Vriska's sight, a slim line of black clothes and gray skin nearly lost against gray sand and black sky.

Vriska lies defiantly unmoving, though now that Terezi's drawn her attention to the wind and her waterlogged clothes, she can't quite stop a slow series of full-body shivers. Maybe she should have waited for dim season to challenge the ocean. The water would still be cold, but at least the wind and sand would be warmer. She closes her eyes, imagining herself maneuvering a boat across the waves, moonlight and auroras waking rainbows in the spray. Or even better, standing on the deck of a real ship, ordering the crew to sail it for her while she aims a canon at her helpless prey.

"Sit up," Terezi says.

Vriska opens her eyes. Terezi is carrying her oversized teal jacket folded over one arm like a blanket. She's also put her shoes and socks back on, and she uses the steel toe in her sneaker to prod Vriska's ribs in a meaningful way.

Vriska sits up.

Terezi sits down beside her and slings the jacket over them both.

It doesn't really stretch far enough - it may be too big for Terezi, but it's nowhere near big enough to cover two trolls, even if one is skinny as a coat hanger and they jam as tightly together as they can, thigh pressed against thigh. It's still ages better than nothing. Vriska shoves her right hand into the pocket and pulls the fabric as far forward as she can.

Up close, she can see the embroidered blue lines that march over the quilted teal fabric like stylized spiderwebs.

"I was talking to Aradia yesternight," Terezi says, looking out over the ocean instead of sideways at Vriska. "She said she and Tavros met a seadweller girl by his hive when they were practicing for our last campaign, and they've exchanged Trollian handles. Maybe we should ask her for some advice on boats."

"Ask a seadweller to teach us how to take down other seadwellers? How stupid can you _get?_" Vriska scoffs.

Terezi shrugs; the motion ripples through the fabric of the jacket. "Okay. But next time, I'm going to research sailing online and you're going to do what I tell you, at least until I'm sure you won't drown yourself again."

"Oh, fuck you, I can look stuff up online as well as you can!" Vriska says. "It's my boat so I'm obviously the captain and you have to follow _my_ orders. You can be navigator or weapons officer, I guess," she adds. They're partners, after all, and while Vriska has all the luck, it's true that Terezi's brain means she doesn't have to wing her hunts nearly as often. Which means her lusus stays well-fed and life is... it's simpler, that's all.

"If you can look things up, why didn't you do that already?" Terezi asks in the terribly reasonable tone of voice that Vriska recognizes, just a bit too late, means she's walked straight into a trap.

"Because!" she snaps, lashing back anyway.

"That lack of foresight is why you are too irresponsible to be the captain," Terezi says with the air of a legislacerator delivering a clinching argument before the court. "I hereby declare mutiny! Henceforth I will be captain and you will be weapons officer." She finally turns toward Vriska, smiling her sharktooth smile but with the softer crinkling around her eyes that means she's on Vriska's side - an ally, not an enemy.

"Your dice are better suited as distance weapons in any case," Terezi adds. "Really this will be the best division of labor."

"It's still my boat!" Vriska says. Terezi is silent, her body slowly warming against Vriska's own despite their sodden clothes and the changeable gusts of wind. Vriska tugs the teal jacket a bit tighter over her shoulder and growls under her breath. Terezi still says nothing.

"Okay, fine, we'll trade being captain. You can even go first. But I get to be captain again after that!"

"See, that wasn't so hard," Terezi says, laughter dancing in her eyes.

Vriska untucks her hand from the pocket of Terezi's stupid oversized jacket and punches her best friend in the ribs. Then she curses because her shoulders suddenly remember they want to declare mutiny and her hand cracks open and starts to bleed again, but somehow she doesn't mind. Terezi is poking at her palm with careless claws, the teal jacket is still too small to really keep either of them warm, Vriska has literally nothing in her sylladex because she'd emptied it to make room for the sailboat she still doesn't know how to use correctly, and this is objectively the most embarrassing, pathetic, vulnerable situation she's been in since the first time she had to hunt dinner for her lusus.

Vriska steals the jacket as it falls from Terezi's shoulders and refuses to give it back.

This is the best night she's had all sweep.

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**AN:** Thanks for reading, and please review! I appreciate all comments, but I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and _why_.


	3. Sing a Song of Sixpence

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Andrew Hussie. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Author's Note:** This story started as a fill for a prompt (_"any, any, toss a coin"_) at **rthstewart**'s 2013 Three Sentence Ficathon, but it quickly became obvious that it wouldn't fit the format restrictions. So I kept writing, and after a while it occurred to me that it also works as a Cotton Candy Bingo (a Dreamwidth fanwork bingo community dedicated to fluff) fill, for the prompt: _money_. So that is what it is now. I have said so, and my word is law. *grin*

**Summary:** Terezi and Vriska on a typical Team Scourge Flarp campaign.

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**Sing a Song of Sixpence**  
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"Do you see this coin?" Terezi asks, crouching down in the carpet of last season's leaves to display the caegar to her terrified opponents. Behind her, Vriska snickers as she sorts through their sylladexes, pocketing anything shiny and tossing the rest aside to lie with their confiscated weapons. Terezi ignores her partner with the ease of long familiarity, and continues: "In a moment, I will flip it. If it lands heads up, I will kill you. Otherwise you are free to go. Do you understand?"

The two trolls - one olive, one muddy yellow-brown, both nearly two sweeps older than Terezi - exchange an all-too-readable look. "Those terms exactly?" the yellowblood asks, her voice wobbly despite the dull imitation of cunning kindling behind her eyes.

"Those terms exactly," Terezi agrees.

"We understand," the oliveblood says, straightening on his knees beside his partner.

Terezi flips the coin. It spins through the air, the few slivers of green and purple moonlight that penetrate the forest canopy reflecting off its sides in dizzying blinks.

The oliveblood snatches it from the air before it can land.

Terezi grins. "I wondered if you would spot that loophole! Not bad. As promised, you are free to go." She stands and turns her back, a blatant sign of disrespect. It takes less than a second to weigh the oliveblood's speed, the yellowblood's brain, and their obvious disgust at surrendering to younger trolls. She counts down in her head: _six, five, four, three, two, one_.

Terezi throws herself flat to the trampled ground. The oliveblood's fist whistles through the air overhead; his cry of surprise jerks the yellowblood's attention back from her dash over to their weapons and supplies.

Terezi rolls neatly to her feet, sword in hand, and shakes her head at their baffled expressions. "I said you would be free to go. I never said I wouldn't defend myself if you broke that implicit truce. It's a shame you weren't clever enough to cut your losses while you could."

"We knew they were cheaters - that's why we picked them," Vriska says, sauntering up to rest her chin on Terezi's shoulder. She is blocking Terezi's sword arm, but that hardly matters anymore; their opponents have gone stiff as statues, caught in Vriska's psychic grip. "I don't know why you keep giving assholes a chance to get away."

"I prefer to bring overwhelming evidence to my cases," Terezi says, and elbows Vriska in the ribs. "Are you done playing pirate?"

"_Playing_ pirate? I _am_ a pirate!" Vriska says, stepping back tossing her hair rather than admit Terezi's strike hit home. "But yeah, I grabbed all the stuff worth grabbing, which wasn't much. These guys aren't just cheaters, they're _pathetic_ cheaters. What's the point in breaking rules if you don't get some sweet loot for your trouble?"

Terezi shrugs. "I don't know. Furthermore, in a shocking development, I don't care!" She turns back toward their trapped prey. "I pronounce you guilty of persistent cheating at Flarp and also of gross stupidity. The sentence is death."

She skewers the two trolls neatly through their hearts, pausing only to retrieve her coin from the oliveblood's pocket. Then she wipes her sword on the fallen, half-rotted leaves at her feet while Vriska captchalogues the corpses. Waste not, want not - there are other ways to feed her partner's lusus, but this one also weeds out the evil and unfit (which is a legislacerator's chief duty after upholding the honor of the empire) and is, frankly, _fun_.

"They were almost clever at the end," Terezi says wistfully as she and Vriska start the hike back from the designated campaign area to her hive. "Maybe someday we'll find some trolls worth playing with more than once."

"Yeah right, the whole point of these campaigns is that we're always playing scum," Vriska scoffs. Then she grimaces, stuffs her hands in her jacket pockets, and says, head turned aside as if talking to the trees rather than Terezi: "But if you want to play wiggler style, I know a guy who plays death-free campaigns with this super-obnoxious girl. They're both pretty weird - he's into Fiduspawn and she thinks she's an archeologist - but they're not _stupid_. Maybe I could see if they're not too chicken to play us sometime."

Terezi stops and catches Vriska's shoulder. "But what about our deal?"

Vriska shrugs. "It's not like she'll starve if I cut down on her feeding schedule a little. Animals wander into her webs on their own and she can get off her fat ass if she's really feeling hungry. Besides, there's more to life than hunting criminals. You've gotta find some friends and hobbies to keep you from being a complete bore once we grow up."

Terezi raises her eyebrows. "Oh really?"

"Yes, really!" Vriska snaps.

"I bow to your superior wisdom," Terezi says, and laughs as Vriska's expression wavers between smug pride and defensive suspicion while she tries to figure out if that was a compliment or a backhanded insult. "Come on, let's get back to my hive and you can introduce me to them online. I'm sure at least one of them must have embarrassing secret stories about you that I don't already know!"

She takes off at a dead run, Vriska in hot pursuit. They crash through the trees together, laughing and shoving at each other, secure in the knowledge that they are the most dangerous things in the forest and they will always have each other's backs.

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**AN:** Thanks for reading, and please review! I appreciate all comments, but I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and _why_.


	4. In a Purple Wood

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Andrew Hussie. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Author's Note:** This story was inspired by the 1/18/13 word #265 on the **15_minute_fic** livejournal prompt community.

**Summary:** Terezi met Nepeta by accident.

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**In a Purple Wood**  
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Terezi met Nepeta by accident.

This was a polite way of saying she'd gotten lost in the woods between the pink moon's set and the green moon's rise and was walking around with her eyes closed in a highly experimental attempt to reach out and grab the nebulous sense of her lusus's dreams and turn that into an actual physical direction. The only tangible result so far had been stubbed toes, tattered pant cuffs, and a growing sense of panic as the forest went silent around her. She'd been thrashing around like wounded prey and a predator had found her trail.

Well, she was a predator too! A very lost and rather small predator, but no troll worth her name and sign would go down without a fight!

Terezi opened her eyes and began to ease her way toward the nearest tree. High ground was always an advantage, and she was _excellent_ at climbing if she did say so herself.

But before she reached the trunk, something compact and heavy crashed down from an overhanging branch, shoving Terezi flat to the ground. Her chin slammed into the ashes of dead leaves and her teeth dug viciously into her lips, shredding skin and flooding her mouth with the sour rush of blood.

"A purrfect strike!" the weight on her back proclaimed. "The mighty huntress purrvails once again in purrtecting her territory! Take that, intruder!"

Terezi mashed her face further into the forest floor and groaned. Vriska would never let her live this down.

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**AN:** Thanks for reading, and please review! I appreciate all comments, but I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and _why_.


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